Senior Year and Stuff

First, I solemnly promise to post the last part of the Road Trip Series really, really soon.

Second, school has started.

And I really like it.

Not all of it. I do not like Personal Finance in the slightest, and staying awake through English on block days is one of the most challenging things ever, but...

For the most part, I'm very, very happy at school.

There are so many wonderful people at school, and so many wonderful things to learn, and experiences to be had and conversations to be held and every morning just seems so optimistic.

It's weird.

But golly, the past two weeks have been almost completely golden.

So. Many. Fun. Classes.

Ministry and Missions, Systematic Theology, Concert Choir and Madrigals, Music Theory, College English, even Government is kind of interesting. And AP Statistics is... bearable.

And there's so many people to talk to!

We had three days of school before leaving on senior trip. And senior trip was surprisingly fun. I really think the only thing most people got out of it was closer/new friendships, but I also know that some people were very much impacted by it. I just really loved hanging out with my friends, and with people who weren't really my friends before the trip. We did flips off diving boards, ziplined, jumped off the high dive, did the barn swing dozens of times, talked and worshiped and "bonded." And it was great.

The ride home, however... well, let's just say that 7+ hours on a bus with over forty other girls does not bring out the best in people. I mostly hid under a blanket fort with Ellen and listened to music.

But I liked the trip for the most part. There were too many athletic activities and too much segregation between the guys and girls, but overall, I had a lot of fun. And we came up with some bomb-awesome ideas for making senior year rock, several of which we have already implemented. Also, worship with that group? A-freaking-mazing. So many kids in our class are musically talented, and when everyone is channeling that towards God, it's so so so so cool.

This week has been mostly us figuring out school, since we barely had time last week. I've learned that we will get very, very little done it Stats, and get a heck of a lot done in music theory.

Music theory is just me and two guys (whom I like very much) and we are, um, a little competitive. Which is great, because we gets loads done very quickly and we're pushing each other to get better. But, it's also a wee bit scary because there are days when I think Oh gosh, we will not all make it out as friends. Let's just say we are all very smart and very used to being the smartest. At least it keeps things interesting, and if we make it out alive, I think we will all be better for this healthy competition.

Thursday afternoon, several senior girls stayed after school and covered the mirrors in two of the bathrooms with brown paper. We then proceeded to write on the paper. We wrote verses, song lyrics, quotes, all sorts of random things. Some were heartfelt, some were funny, but they all celebrated beauty that goes beyond what someone looks like. We wrote about being a strong woman, about being made in the image of God, of being wonderful and loved and valued. And I think it may have been more meaningful for us seniors who made it than any of the underclassmen who saw it.

Thursday was also Sonic's annual $0.50 corn dog day, so before we started working, Sofia and I drove to Sonic and got fifteen corn-dogs. It was glorious, and we thought it was hilarious. The guy who took our order was a little surprised by how many we wanted. They were delicious corn dogs, too.

Friday night absolutely wonderful. It was Final Friday, so Holly and I dropped by R Coffee Shop to see Maddie's artwork before it was moved/sold. It was amazing art, and an adorable shop, and really good coffee. Then we went to Sonic, got kids' grilled cheeses with tots, and headed to Trinity for the soccer game. We saw about twenty minutes of the game before it stopped for lightning. My dearest Laura was at the game, as Trinity was playing her school, so I chatted with her as we waited to find out what everyone else was going to do. We decided to head to someone's house for swing dancing. Well, we decide this, and suddenly it's pouring. Buckets of rain fall from the sky, and we are drenched in seconds. And obviously we have to sprint to our car, which about as far away as we could have parked, and everyone is screaming with delighted shock and we're running through puddles, avoiding cars, cheering and gasping and feeling suddenly, exquisitely vibrant and young. So we run, and Laura ends up in our car and we're shaking with cold and blasting the Black Keys and trying to find her parents. We find their car and drop her off and yell goodbye and exchange phone numbers with the promise to hang out soon.

Then Holly and I drive to the swing dancing party. It was a small party, really just us, five boys and six-ish other girls. But it was lovely. We played music and danced in the backyard on the basketball court and ate Chex Mix with M&Ms. I was getting fairly decent at it by the end of the evening. There is something so fun about swing dancing. It's so fast, and takes so much energy, and I mess up so much (sorry, Devin and Ethan), but it's so fun and relaxed. My goal is to be fairly competent by Barn Dance.

As the night wore on, we all got exhausted, and wound up sitting around a fire pit singing. Isaac brought his violin, Will had his guitar, and Ethan had his ukulele and an impromptu jam session happened. Will sang Untitled by Matt Corby and... wow. The feels.

Holly and I stayed until a little after midnight, singing and talking and dancing. It was really, really great. I was kind of surprised how much fun I had, since none of my "usual" friends were there. But it was nice to branch out, and amazing to get to practice dancing all night, and the jam/worship session at the end was just... Mmm. Yas. It was a good, good night.

So all in all? I'm so optimistic about this year. I have been blessed with someone wonderful friends and fabulous teachers, and I get to learn about things I actually care about.

Senior year, let's go.

Culture: Road Trip Diaries -- Part Two

(Sorry, this is painfully late... The end of the trip was exhausting and then we got home and it's so easy to get distracted here at home. Anywho. Here you are. Enjoy.)

July 8, 2015
Day 6
States Traversed: California
Hours on the Road: 4

We spent the morning in Yosemite still, stopping in the Valley for coffee and second breakfast and then walking to the Falls. They were gorgeous, but crowded. We were there by ten am, and I shudder to think how busy it would be later in the afternoon. They were beautiful, though (also, I might need to start using the thesaurus for more adjectives – I think “pretty,” “beautiful,” and “gorgeous” are starting to sound a bit hackneyed and cannot convey the true measure of wonder that this trip has inspired).
We got lost trying to get back to our car, which was kind of miserable. Getting lost in the woods, on a day when we had plenty of time and bottled water, would honestly be lovely.
Noooot so much when you’re not even actually in the woods, you have no water, and you agreed to thirty minute parking. That was a tad bit stressful. We did, eventually, find our car and hit the road again. Our destination: A hotel in Stockton, California. This was a pretty chill drive. I mostly read. Heh. I think I was still reading Fic at this point. I seriously loved that book. My nerdy, fangirl heart couldn't get enough. For example, did you know that oftentimes straight women write slash fic because they want to explore a relationship in which both partners are equal? Fascinating. And that tooons of classic authors -- Ray Bradbury, the Bronte sisters, J.M. Barrie, to name a few -- wrote fanfic? So. Interesting. Also, Sherlock Holmes fans have always been the crazy ones.
Anywho. Lots of driving which led us to a hotel in which we crashed.

July 9, 2015
Day 7
States: California
Hours: 5

We went into San Francisco for the day. I loved it. Getting into the city was the hardest part – we were stuck in traffic for over an hour longer than we expected. And this was like ten a.m. on a Thursday. It was crazy. Holly said it reminded of her of India, minus the cows. I had to agree.
Once we finally got there, we left our car to be parked in a parking garage – something that gave Holly a loooot of anxiety.
“You mean we just give him our keys? But what if he takes our stuff? Or our car?”
(He didn’t. Our car was safe and sound when we got back and he didn’t even charge us extra for being twenty minutes late.)
Then we walked around Pier 39 and ate lunch at a seafood place (Fog Harbor Fish House). It was lovely and had wonderful views of the sea and Alcatraz and sometimes the Golden Gate Bridge (there was a lot of fog, so our view of the bridge sometimes existed and sometimes didn't).
Then there was more walking about on Fisherman’s Wharf. There were so many people. Tourists. Vendors. Street performers. Runners. Business men stopping for lunch. Homeless people. All sorts of people, passing each other, exchanging nods or avoiding eye contact, people living their lives, people searching for meaning in the city.
There’s music everywhere. Musicians on the street, singing John Legend covers (personally I liked it better than the original – far more rocking), playing in a little Chinese stringed instrument, dancing to the Beatles or the Eagles or a jazz quartet. Music every few feet, coming from cars or buildings or headphones.
I like cities. I like the chaos and movement. I really like San Francisco. It isn’t like cities I’ve been to before. It has the sophistication of Europe and the chaos of Bangalore and a laid-back feeling that is all its own.
Everywhere I’ve been to on this trip has had its own distinct culture. Not just the geography, all though that’s part of it, but the people and the attitude and the mannerisms and the food and history are all different. They may share aspects, but they are all different. For example, Gallup is a small town, heavily influenced by its location of Route 66 and connections to Mexico. Albuquerque, while in the same state, is more big-time. It’s well-known, there’s more to do, it’s not as close-knit. The Grand Canyon is different from Yosemite. They’re both National Parks, but the Grand Canyon is more “Hello, we have epic rocks. Please admire our epic rocks from your designated viewpoint/trail/picnic area.” Yosemite, on the other hand is like “Hi kids! Nature is cool! Go run around! Butstayofftheseareasandfollowthebearrulesorwewillfineyouobsceneamountsofmoney.”
San Francisco isn’t like any of these places.
And yet all of them contribute to the overall American culture, even if some are more often cited than they rest.
I like comparing the three archetypes in my head – National Park/Nature, small town, big city. Nature stirs you in a way that’s quiet, slow. It works at your soul and pulls you in and makes you appreciate it. It’s solitary and not easily expressed (unless you’re quite talented).
Small towns are (in my experience) home-y and welcoming and very American Dream-esque. They’re still and safe and represent something idyllic and almost extinct.
Big cities, though… they yank you in headfirst. They don’t wait for you or even try to let you catch up. They move and change and have a heartbeat that may just be the bass from downtown.
And all of these are good in their own way, but my favorite has to be the city.
I really, really like San Francisco. The cute houses. The wharf. The people. The colors (even if it was rainy and foggy, there were still lots of colors). The rainy and foggy-ness. The noise. The pulse. Chinatown.
Chinatown is splendid. I am in love. It’s all the best parts of Commercial Street in Bangalore – awesome stuff for cheap, amazing food, and just the culture is very India-ish. But it’s still distinctly American, there’s American flags flying, not a cow in sight, trash on the street is frowned upon. I love it. I love the blend of cultures, the best of both worlds, as it is. And the fooood. I love Chinese food.
It was all in all a really good day of new experiences and adventures that were, in my book at least, very rewarding.
And now, “on to the next crazy venture ‘neath the stars.”

July 10, 2015
Day 8
Hours on the Road: 8
States Traversed: California

Pro tip: The Coastal Highway in Northern California is not, actually, on the coast. It's through the mountains.
I have seen more than my share of mountains on this trip.
However, the highway does go through the Redwood Forests, which are awesome. Those trees are soooo huge. They're so wide that it'd take four or five people to put their arms around them, and so tall you have to stand way far back from them and crane you neck to see the top. I've read about trees that big, but never seen them. It's an ancient forest, deep within which a mystical elven race is hidden. It was pretty dang cool. We wanted to go see the tree that you can drive through, buuuut our cartop carrier was too tall. :/ Awk.
It really wasn't bad, but the ocean would have been nice to see.
Our campsite that night was... a struggle to get to.
Let me set the scene.
First, let me say that Holly likes to exaggerate things. I have a habit of saying "This is how horror movies start." When Holly and I are home alone and hear strange sounds, when my friends and I find an abandoned school after dark, when I go to the woods by myself, on foggy nights. But if you ask Holly, I say it all the time. Running laundry? This is how horror movies start. Reading a book? This is how horror movies start. On the beach? This is how horror movies start.
Only a few days before, Holly had been mocking me for this exact thing, much to the amusement of our family (especially Dad).
Now, it's getting dark. We are in Northern California, with limited cellular service. A sign directed us down a narrow, barely paved road to "Gold Bluffs Campground." The branches and leaves far above wove together, letting in only small patches of light. The ground on either side of the road was covered in weeds and jungle plants and grass. It was green and dark and quiet.
The road wound around and around, narrowing with every turn.
It was ominous, and Holly and I couldn't help giggling at how very cliche it seemed.
I couldn't help it, I whispered "This is how horror movies start."
It was perfect comedic timing.
Because a) I was exactly right. A family on vacation getting led down a narrow road through the woods? Tell me it doesn't sound like we're about to stumble upon a run down house with an ax murderer inside. b) everyone remembered Holly joking about this just days ago.
It was so very funny, but you know, it was still a bit like... Yeah, this is how we die.
(Obviously we didn't.)
Our campsite was actually pretty cool. We could hear the ocean all night. I love the ocean.




July 11, 2015
Day 9
Hours on the Road: Way too many.
States Traversed: California, Oregon

This day had a lot more coast, which was wonderful. We played on the beach before we started driving. It was freezing. That water put Yosemite's to shame. It was so. cold. The sand was gray, dark gray, and extremely soft. It was so cool. The whole beach was gray, really. Gray sand and gray sea and gray cloudy sky. I loved it. You couldn't tell where the horizon was unless you looked really hard, because the sea and the sky were the same color. It just looked like a pearly wall. You know in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when they reach the End of the World? It looked like that. The world just stopped. It was beautiful and weird and I know that the Earth is a sphere, but it still looked as if it ended and my mind kind of exploded.
Then we drove and I read. I was reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote at this point, which is a super-de-duper interesting account of murder and greed and tragedy. To summarize, these two guys murdered a family in Holcomb, Kansas, with no clues and no apparent motive. It's actually a really sad story, and written engagingly and it's so well-researched. I love well-researched books. I liked it quite a lot.
Driving, driving, driving.
We got to our campsite, which was a pseudo-campsite like the one outside of Yosemite. It had free wifi, so that was kind of very cool. It was also a very, very cold. I wore my sweatpants and like three shirts and huddled under my sleeping bag as we ate dinner. And I read some more. ;)

July 12, 2015
Day 10
Hours on the Road: I literally don't even know. A lot.
States Traversed: Oregon, Washington

GUYS. If you ever get the chance, go to Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon. Oh my cow. Ohhh my cow it's beautiful. Holly and I got to go in and look around and explore and I almost cried. So it's an adorable inn on the beach, and every room is based on a different author. There's F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alice Walker, J.K. Rowling, Agatha Christie (golly her room was pretty), Jules Verne (SO COOL), J.R.R. Tolkien, Ernest Hemingway, Dr. Seuss, and a lot more. The whole attic? It's a glorious library and game room. The dining room has a no phones rule. There's two resident cats.
Basically I want to live there. I may have cried a little.
We then continued on the road to Seattle. I read (gasp). I did switch up what I was reading though. We were finally in a civilized enough area to have data on our phones... and I proceeded to use a whole lot of it to read Harry Potter fanfic. My favorite? An AU Dramione fic where Voldemort won. Holy wow it was really good. (It's called Midnight and it's on fanfiction.net if you want to go there....) Seriously, I am still not over this fic. AND IT'S NOT COMPLETED. Which is scary, because who knows when it will be updated, but there is hope. All the characters were portrayed so well, and the writing was poetic and elegant and dark, and the CHARACTERS, and I'm obsessed with Dramione because I love the idea of them having to get past their own pride and prejudices (heh, see what I did there), in order to work together, and then become friends, and then be madly in love. I like the AUs best, because I feel like there's more freedom there to mess with the reasons why they would have to work together, and I like the ones that keep pretty close to the canon personalities, and Midnight totally does.... And I sound so very, very geeky right now. I will stop. (But seriously it's amazing. Draco and Hermione and Luna and Ginny and Blaise Zambini and twisted, broken people who don't know what's right anymore or how to stop Voldemort at this point, and Grimm fairy tale references and WW2 influences and T.S. Eliot quotes... Guys, I legitimately cannot with this story. I adore it. I will actually stop now. Fangirl rant over.)
Um, so we drove. I read and squealed over Draco being vulnerable and tried to keep breathing when they talked about Molly Weasley in Azkaban.
I swear I'm a normal, rational. mature human who is a deep thinker and values real life interactions.
When we got to Seattle that evening, wem were greeted by our wonderful, wonderful cousins. Cadence is twelve, Emerson is ten,and Juliana is seven (I think), and they are more intelligent, interesting, and fun than half the people at my school. They greeted us so very enthusiastically, and then took us on a "walk" (run. They expected me to run) down a trail and to a junkyard behind their school.
Let me tell you how this walk/run went. It was basically Juliana yelling abuses at us for being to slow as we ran down incredibly precarious hills covered in pebbles. It was exhausting and terrifying. The junkyard was pretty cool though. We saw a deer, and got to climb on stuff and run/slide down a gravel pile.
It was fun to go exploring and laugh at the things they said and it just felt so relaxed and simple and innocent and I loved it.
Then we headed back up the precarious hills, which was infinitely more terrifying. I thought for sure I was going to fall down and die.
Back at the house, we ate dinner and played some board games (and got super competitive) and prank called almost every Pizza Hut in the country and stayed up way later than kids their age should. It rocked.
I went to bed and kept reading Midnight, tbh.

July 13, 2015
Day 11
Hours on the Road: ZERO PRAISE THE LORD. NONE. ZILCH. ZIPPO.
States Traversed: The Kirby's backyard


We stayed at their house all day and it was lovely.We played outside, Skyped the Clarks for about five hours, played more board games, played Capture the Flag, the boys made us Italian Cream Sodas, Mac broke his finger, we played video games... It was sooo nice (other than the broken finger). I love my cousins so much, guys. So so much.
It did make me miss the Clarks a lot a lot a lot. This summer has felt very... un-summer-ish without them. I'm used to spending everyday with Lil and Crey, eating homemade ice cream, swimming, walking all over Grandma's neighborhood. This year has been more... Netflix-filled.
Anyway, we hung out pretty much all day, and then Mom, Dad, Aunt Sarah, and Uncle J went out to dinner. We kids stayed home, ate mac and cheese, played more capture the flag. This was when Mac broke his finger, so after that we just went in and played Star Wars Battlefront II for hours.
I'm terrible at that game.
The adults came home and checked out Mac's hand (we had iced it and gave him ibuprofen and theorized about whether it was broken or just jammed. It was his pinky and it had gone sideways, so we were thinking broken.) Mom and Dad decided to take him to a doctor the next day, and so we all went to bed.

To be continued. Again.